I have no formula but consider design and value most important aesthetically to hold a painting together.  I break things down into simple shapes, not concerning myself what the object really is but how it will contribute to an abstract design. I allow myself the freedom to change, exaggerate, simplify, scrape, sand, glaze, repaint etc. I tie shapes together forming abstract patterns until something resonate within myself, I trust feeling, instinct and intuition above everything else.
   I try to eliminate the unnecessary, it is the search for that indefinable connection that tells you when you have said something  close to your own true nature, it is different for everyone and this, to me, is where the beauty of art lives. Some will find it in the skill of rendering  the subject, some in the ambiguity of an abstraction. I try not to limit or restrict anything in this search. I try to remain open, curious, and vulnerable.

  The richest part of painting is when you make that internal connection, I am constantly searching within myself to find that connection. You will have to discover it for your self, it is different for everyone.... that what makes art so beautiful.

In painting everything is relative. color is no exception.  We are just illusionists, if we want something bright we place something dull or grey next to it. If we want something straight we place something curved next to it etc. Everything has an opposite up to down, black to white etc. The degree that we place these opposites or compliments against each other will determined the dynamics of the painting.

A painting should tell you as much about the artist as the subject he or she is painting…. until then, to me, it is just a painting with varying degrees of skill.

The ultimate aim of painting is not decorative beauty but truth … what is truth? It must not be confused with formal resemblance,indeed formal resemblance only reaches the appearance of things where as the function of truth is to capture their essence.     

                                                                                                                                                                                           SHI TAO

I might add not only the subject’s essence but the artist as well.

In philosophy, essence is the attribute or set of attributes that make an entity or substance what it fundamentally is, and which it has by necessity, and without which it loses its identity.

Our identity must be part of our own work…. Somehow we must fight our way in.